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Dean Venture
Dean Venture is one of the two titular Venture Brothers and a main character on the Adult Swim program of the same name, serving as a parody of such boy adventurers as The Hardy Boys and Jonny Quest. He is voiced by Michael Sinterniklaas. Appearance and personality Dean is sixteen years old (see "Death" and "rebirth" below), tall and thin, and wears his brown hair in a slightly longer style than his fraternal twin brother Hank. His face is freckled and he usually wears a sweater-vest over a button-up shirt with trousers that are slightly too short for his height. For pajamas, Dean wears Spider-Man Underoos. While both Dean and Hank seem to have inherited the adventurer's spirit from their grandfather, the legendary scientist Jonas Venture, most of the brothers' athletic prowess seems to have gone to Hank. Dean is rather more like his father, Dr. Thaddeus Venture: bookish, nerdy, and scrawny. He gets dizzy when he stands up quickly and is often overpowered by his brother during horseplay. Compared to Hank, he is also more intelligent, shy and naïve; both siblings, however, show a tendency to lose touch with reality more suited to much younger boys. Dr. Venture freely admits that Dean is somewhat "more effeminate" than Hank. Like many teenaged siblings, Hank serves as both best friend and worst enemy to Dean (and vice versa). On a moment's notice, they switch from wrestling with each other to enthusiastically pursuing a new adventure together. Both boys tend to speak and act in an oddly quaint manner, using interjections like "Golly!" and "Gee whiz!" despite the modern-day setting of the show. This is largely a comical acknowledgement of the works they parody (such as the above-mentioned Hardy Boys and Jonny Quest). Despite being the show's title characters, Hank and Dean usually play very minor roles in each episode. They typically conduct laughingly juvenile investigations into what they consider to be mysteries (which are often very mundane matters) and are occasionally abducted by villains. Family and friends Dr. Venture has been a single parent for an unknown period of time, and very little has been revealed about the boys' mother (including her identity and why she is not present). Apparently, Dr. Venture has not shared any of this information with Hank or Dean either; during the episode "Hate Floats," Dean happily jumped to the conclusion that Dr. Girlfriend was their mother when she displayed cursory knowledge about the boys. One of Venture's only references to the boys' birth was an enigmatic comment in "Careers in Science" that he created them in a "moment of passion" and could end their lives in similar circumstances. Venture is, for the most part, a reluctant father. He frequently expresses nothing but annoyance towards the boys, and shows a general lack of concern over their well-being (sometimes wondering where they are only after they have been missing for many hours). In one instance, Dean admits that Dr. Venture sometimes calls him Don or Dave, implying that he can not be bothered to remember his sons' names. The Venture family's bodyguard, Brock Samson, treats the boys with more respect and affection than does their father, dispensing advice and showing a good deal more patience with their immaturity. In an uncharacteristically paternal moment, however, Dr. Venture took Dean to the mall as a birthday present to buy him his first "speed suit"... which turned out to be an identical version of the short-sleeved jumpsuit his father habitually wears. Venture's decision to buy this garment for Dean but not Hank may indicate that he is grooming the more academic boy to be his successor as a "super-scientist." While both boys express a vague, wide-eyed interest in "pretty girls," Dean has become particularly smitten with Triana Orpheus, the gothy teenage daughter of ally Dr. Orpheus. Unfortunately, Dean appears to share his father's ineptness with women as well: he often babbles incoherently and manages to embarrass himself in Triana's presence. In private, he engages in childish fantasies of rescuing her from dangerous situations and "practicing being a boyfriend" with her (kissing). Hank is well aware of this crush and needles Dean about it at every opportunity. His feelings for Triana may be more than a childish infatuation, however; in the episode "Eeney, Meeney, Miney... Magic!" Dr. Orpheus theorized that the machine in which Hank, Dean and Brock had been trapped could only be opened by true love. Shortly afterwards, the doors opened when Dean heard Triana speak his name. Triana has shown no sign so far that she knows about Dean's feelings for her; due to Dean's obviously flustered behavior around her, she may simply assume that he is somewhat dumber than he actually is. Episode-specific information Although one episode focused primarily on Dean ("Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean"), the plot largely revolved around his case of acute testicular torsion and its subsequent treatment, particularly the humiliating aspects. He was awkwardly unable to convey the location of his pain (other than "down there" or "in the rocks") and shyly refused to let his father examine him. After Pete White and Billy Quizboy were improbably able to correct the condition with emergency surgery, a parade of family and friends (including Triana) visited him while his crotch was wrapped in bandages. Dr. White thoughtfully presented Dean with an envelope containing the remains of his recently-grown pubic hair, since the operation required its removal. Dean's slightly superior intellect often proves no match for Hank's slightly superior strength. In many situations, Dean finds himself the unwilling subordinate to Hank's wishes: he was forced to serve as his brother's slave in "Mid-Life Chrysalis" and became the lone employee at Hank's grinder and lemonade stand in "Tag Sale -- You're It!". In "Past Tense," Dean refuses to believe Hank's assertion that Brock kills bad guys; he insists childishly that the police carry them away in sleeping bags rather than body bags. When their father and Brock are both kidnapped soon afterwards, however, Dean thinks clearly enough to ask the original Team Venture for help in rescuing them while Hank panics. "Death" and "rebirth" The Venture Bros. provided a surprising finale to its first season as Dean and Hank apparently died in a fiery explosion. The last scene of "Return to Spider-Skull Island" shows Brock and Orpheus looking at the boys' charred corpses in horror as Dr. Venture says "Get their clothes" in a matter-of-fact tone. The second season's first episode, "Powerless in the Face of Death" revealed that Venture easily cloned the boys; in fact, they had died more than a dozen times previously. Development pods accelerate the clones' growth until they roughly match the boys' age at the time of their death, and an audio system implants recorded memories and basic knowledge into their minds as they "incubate." Neither brother is aware that they are clones. When the latest version of Hank and Dean were awakened at the beginning of the episode "Hate Floats," Brock and Venture pretended it was their sixteenth birthday. The boys were presented with ID cards apparently reused from the previous set of clones; when Hank questioned his ID's incorrect date, Venture brusquely dismissed his questions with "curiosity killed more than the cat, boy." Due to Dr. Venture's reluctance to discuss his sons' mother (not to mention his "super-science" background and lack of social skills), some fans have speculated that Dean and Hank were never born in the conventional sense and are merely clones of their "father." This is somewhat far-fetched, however, since the clones' identical appearance in every "generation" would imply that they would both look like a young Dr. Venture if this were the case. (As shown in "Past Tense", the college-aged Thaddeus Venture looked very different than do Hank and Dean.) Category:The Venture Bros. characters category:Fictional clones